


Seven Texts, 2 AM

by shewhospeakswiththunder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Ben is blind, Blind Character, Blindness, F/M, Mentions of surgical procedures, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, My First Smut, Scars, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 21:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20216815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhospeakswiththunder/pseuds/shewhospeakswiththunder
Summary: Ben has good reasons not to have a romantic relationship with his neighbor, Rey. She has other ideas.For the prompt:"Peer Pressure" by James Bay (feat Julia Michaels)





	Seven Texts, 2 AM

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Frog_heart_00](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frog_heart_00/gifts).

Ben’s phone buzzed against his wooden bedside table, jarring him from his wandering thoughts. Twisting onto his stomach, he reached over, pressed the home button, and tapped the screen twice.

“_One notification_,” the tinny voice from the phone said in response.

He tapped the screen again.

“_Sunday, July twenty-fourth. Two fourteen AM. Messages. Rey mobile. Hey_,” the phone rattled off.

He rubbed his face and sighed. It wasn’t as if he had been sleeping anyway. His unfortunately cyclic insomnia had been on a frustrating upswing for the past week or so and, if he was honest with himself, this was a welcome distraction from the incessant whirl of thoughts running through his mind. With Rey, there was never just one text, so he prepared for the onslaught she was sure to fire off shortly.

“_Rey mobile. You up still_.”

“_Rey mobile. You like never sleep so I assume you are haha smiley face_.”

There would be more. Ben waited.

“_Rey mobile. Can I come uber_.”

“_Rey mobile. Asterisk over_.”

“_Rey mobile. Ugh_.”

Giving her another minute for one last text, he finally held down the home button and muttered into the phone, “Text Rey mobile: Yes, I’m up.”

Ben rolled out of his bed and threw on a cotton shirt and pajama bottoms before shuffling into the kitchen to pour a glass of water. Directly behind his sink and a wall of cupboards was the apartment building’s main hallway, and he could always hear the telltale heel-heavy footfalls that announced Rey’s arrival from her own apartment.

The sound of a door opening and shutting loudly down the hall was the first sign she was on her way. He had to chuckle—the neighbors below her must love the racket she probably made at all hours of the night and day.

Rey was a spitfire and veritable whirlwind of energy, and her engineering job at the local power plant often required her to work odd hours on rotating shifts. One of her favorite pastimes was bothering Ben when he couldn’t sleep.

He didn’t mind it one bit.

As she drew closer to his door, he listened more closely: was she barefoot?

Rey’s uniquely brash, knuckley three-fold knock signaled her arrival, and Ben moved to open the door, but stubbed his little toe painfully on the small table where he kept his keys. The keys clattered loudly in their designated ceramic tray at the forceful collision, but nothing fell over, mercifully.

“_Goddammit_, Poe!” Ben howled, trying to recover quickly and berating himself for the thousandth time for maintaining a friendship with such a willfully obnoxious asshole. It wasn’t the first time Poe had purposefully moved the little table out from the wall just a smidge as a nasty surprise for Ben, and it wouldn’t be the last. Ben gritted his teeth at the idea of Poe’s self-satisfied grin. The jerk.

“Ben, are you okay?” he heard Rey say, her voice muffled through the door.

“Yeah,” he grunted. Metal rasped on metal as he slid the top lock open, a heavy clunk then sounding as he turned the lock on the door handle. Opening the door wide, he stepped to the side to finally let Rey in.

“You sure?” she asked, moving past him, concern heavy in her voice. Ben had long since come to terms with the overly cautious manner most people used with him as a matter of course, a well-intentioned instinct, but it still grew tiresome at times.

“Yeah,” he brushed it off, more preoccupied with the nasal congestion he had heard underneath Rey’s worried tone. “Are you sick?”

“No! No, I wouldn’t have come over if I was. You know that.”

“Are you… have you been crying?”

“Um…” She gave a shaky sigh. “I just…don’t want to be alone right now.”

Ben was unsure what to do, anxiety beginning to pool in his gut. The Rey he had come to know over the past few months was incessantly cheery, endearingly plucky. This was new, and it was Ben’s turn to worry.

“Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll… I’ll make some tea.” It seemed like a good idea, something his mother would have done in this type of situation. To be fair, Ben needed time to collect himself, to think of what to say and to keep his hands busy in the meantime.

Rey padded over to the sofa and sat down, the old springs creaking under her.

Setting the kettle to boil, Ben searched for the old box of Earl Grey he hoped was still floating around somewhere in his cupboard. When his fingertips brushed the familiar rectangular box, he breathed a sigh of relief and prepared two mugs. He sniffed the small box, wondering to himself if tea ever went stale. It was too late now, he supposed, and while Rey might be a Brit, she never seemed very picky.

Once the task was complete and his hands now unoccupied, he turned to face her, still nervous. He didn’t do feelings well, and comforting others was not a skill he had to exercise often.

“Do you, um, want to talk about it?” he prompted her.

Sounding every bit as nervous as he felt, she said, “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. I…I miss home.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she began to sob in earnest.

It broke his heart to hear her crying, deep pangs of sympathy echoing in his chest. He knew all about starting over, alone, in an unfamiliar place.

“I’m sorry, I just needed some sort of distraction, to get out of my flat,” she apologized through her tears.

“What kind of distraction?” he asked quickly, grateful for something to work with. He strode over to the couch and sat down in his customary spot, opposite her. “A movie? A stiff drink?”

Surprising him, he felt the couch give as she scooched a little closer. “I don’t know. Maybe let’s just talk.”

“O…kay. What about?” Her proximity made his palms start to sweat.

“What do you think I look like?”

It was well known among his friends, the few that he had anyway, that Ben had a peculiar knack for guessing people’s appearances. Rey found this uncanny precision fascinating and hilarious in equal measure. Hair color and relative attractiveness were areas of specialty, and although body type was less of an exact science, he could usually guess with some degree of accuracy.

She loved to test him when they were out together, at the mall, walking through the park, at the nearby coffee shop. _ How about that person? _ was an all-too-familiar phrase by now and, more often than not, he was game to take a stab at it. He was rarely wrong, and at that point it was almost a matter of pride.

This time around, he was not game. 

He didn’t do feelings. _ Especially _when it came to Rey.

Their friendship had grown naturally, as neighborly acquaintanceships tend to do, but their mutual love for podcasts and doing laundry at ungodly hours of the morning had brought them much closer as friends, and far more rapidly than Ben cared to dwell on. Sooner than he had realized, Rey had become much more than just a neighbor down the hall.

The first time Ben had heard her voice was in the form of curses falling from her lips as she fumbled with several large plastic bags and fought with a jingling set of keys. If her loud, “_Bollocks! _” hadn’t been enough to convince him, the countless hours spent with her, getting to know her as a feisty firecracker had cemented the truth in place.

And she _ was _ beautiful. He knew it the way that he knew there was a sun in the sky—she just was.

She was a staple of his life, and the thought of not having her in it was a concept that made Ben’s heart squeeze painfully. He just… wasn’t relationship material.

And, he had to wonder what exactly she was angling at. Why fish for compliments now? Weren’t they past all that? And to be quite frank, what the hell did it matter anyway?

“You are taller than average and… definitely a brunette,” he compromised, feigning casualness. There was more, so much more—he would bet money that her eyes were green, probably had a toned, athletic build, long legs. Just his type. Just out of reach.

“No, like, do I sound like I’m pretty?”

She wasn’t going to give in, and Ben despaired. Sighing heavily, he gave in, if only to help her feel a little better. “Yes. You do.”

She leaned forward and gently took his hand from where it rested on his knee, lightly tracing the palm lines, brushing over the calluses at the bases of his fingers earned over years of weight lifting. From there, her fingertips skimmed over his wrist and up his arm, sending shivers rioting up his spine. He moved away from her, at once uncomfortable and simultaneously aching for more.

“Rey, what’s going on?”

“Ben, _ please_,” she begged, choking on more tears.

The kettle suddenly shrieked from the kitchen, jolting them from the tense moment. Ben bolted and shakily prepared the tea, deeply grateful for the opportunity for space. He brought the two mugs out and placed them on the coffee table, putting as much distance between himself and Rey as he possibly could.

It hit him, with all the force of a semi hurtling down the highway—she was intensely lonely. She also happened to be impulsive, the type of person who would pack up and move to another continent on a whim. The type to drink too much on a work night, the type to initiate physical contact with someone else before thinking it through.

Ben’s hands clenched nervously. This was dangerous territory. Boundaries had to be set, but gently. Nothing would make him more unhappy than losing her friendship, it meant too much to him, but she needed to rethink what she was trying to do.

Before he could decide where to begin, she blurted out, “Do you want me at all? Even just a little bit?” The pain and desperation in her tear-filled question echoed in Ben, his soul aching with her.

“Yes,” he choked out, cursing himself as a tactless trash-fire of a man even as the word left his mouth.

“Then touch me,” she tried again, taking his hand once more and bringing it to her face. He yanked it away.

“No,” he said, harsher than he meant it to sound, but he had to put a stop to her recklessness.

“_Why? _”

Bitterness crept into his words. “And I thought I was the blind one. _ Think_, Rey. Why might this be a bad idea?” The ensuing silence was taut with the sting of his rejection. “You’re smart. You should have realized by now why I’m not someone to get too attached to.”

“What are you talking about?” she threw at him, that fiery spirit rearing up.

“Look at me, Rey!” His voice rose in volume, and he didn’t mean to yell at her, truly, but the things he was about to say hurt him even before they were said. “Look at this!” He swept the hair at his left temple back, giving her a clear view of the shaved area there, the staples from his last surgery only recently removed—his eleventh craniotomy with tumor removal. “These!” Pulling up the back of his shirt, he flashed at her the numerous surgical scars running up his back. “This!” He pulled up the front of his shirt this time, exposing his left side, feeling for that familiar puckered scar from his kidney transplant three years ago, stoking the horrific guilt that puckered there, too.

She knew about all these scars and more. It wasn’t a secret—she knew how often he had to undergo surgery, knew he was on medications that allowed him to survive another day.

“I don’t care about that stuff!” she shot back, more stubborn than ever.

“You don’t care,” he sneered, knowing how petulant he sounded. Better to sound like a brat than a wounded man.

“I care about _ you_, not your… medical issues,” she amended.

“Well, they’re a part of me, a part of my life. My body is genetically programmed to fucking _ self-destruct_, Rey! You aren’t thinking about what you’re starting here.” The hardness, the fury swelled up inside him, hot and metallic. Not at Rey, he wasn’t angry at her. He was angry that it had to be this way, angry that he was now forced to spell it out for her. There was a finality to this, the conversation that Ben so badly wished didn’t have to happen. 

He waited, bracing himself for the waspish retort that was soon to come. It didn’t.

Instead, she was quiet for a time, and when she did speak, it was subdued, thoughtful.

“Do you remember when you told me how scared you were the first time you had to cross the intersection of Jefferson and Washington by yourself? Right after you first learned how to use your cane?”

He nodded curtly.

“Well, that’s life. Maybe you’re really scared of what might be coming down the road, but you have to cross that intersection or you’ll just be stuck there on the sidewalk forever. You have to take that first step off the curb.”

She wasn’t wrong. He had been petrified in that moment, years ago now, and not for the first time in his life.

There had been so many frightening first steps for Ben over the past decade.

When he had just turned seventeen and was still recovering from his first brain surgery, and his doctor told him he would never see again. When he made the choice to move to Denver by himself, to attend school for the blind. When he found out his father died on the surgical table just after giving Ben a new kidney.

So much fear, so much guilt, that Ben had to learn to deal with, to live with. He had made himself an independent man, despite all that, but was just too heavy a burden to lay at someone else’s feet. At Rey’s feet. She deserved so much more.

“My problems shouldn’t be anyone else’s to deal with—”

“I don’t want to talk about your _ problems_, Ben,” she interrupted him. “I want you to put your hands on my body and make me feel good.”

_ Well, fuck_.

“Rey—” he breathed out unevenly.

“I’ll start,” she said, crawling over to him on the couch and sweeping one leg over him, straddling his lap and nearly killing him with the incredible feeling of her weight pressing down on his midsection.

He could barely breathe.

“I’m going to kiss you,” she warned, for his benefit. She knew him so well, and the knowledge made his heart stutter.

Her fingers wove into his hair, carefully avoiding the new scar, and she lowered her face to his, her lips brushing his softly, murmuring, “I’ve wanted this for such a long time.”

Then, she kissed him.

If he thought his heart was hammering before, this was a new thing entirely.

Her arms wound around his neck, and he groaned into her mouth at the intense pleasure of her insistent, hungry kiss. Her lips were pliant, giving, opening and closing around his in a way that made his heart skip several beats.

His hands came up to her waist almost of their own accord, sliding down to that specific spot where her torso curved out into _ hips_, his rough palms catching on the silky smooth fabric of her… pajamas?

Sensing his confusion, she broke away from the kiss, breathing a little hard. “Do you like it?” she asked, taking her hands and covering his, moving them upward over the flimsy fabric to barely skim the soft underside of her breasts.

She wasn’t wearing a bra.

Ben almost choked, instantaneously aroused at the absolute _ audacity _ of her coming over to his apartment dressed like she was. Which was to say, barely dressed _ at all _.

This boldness spurred him, and he tucked one hand up under the scanty slip of clothing, searching for her nipple, his breath catching as the soft skin firmed up to a taut peak underneath the light brush of his fingertips. With his other hand, he grabbed at her ponytail and tugged. The satisfied moan she gave could have been the death of him.

Now he was hard in earnest, and she must have known. Wiggling downward, she pushed her pelvis against his and kissed his neck, eliciting a guttural groan from somewhere deep in his throat, his head falling back against the couch.

“God, you’re so perfect,” she muttered, her breath hot on his skin, grinding against him one more time. “Make that noise again.”

It wasn’t enough though, the light friction she was creating between them, and he pushed his hips up, rubbing the hot, aching length between his legs against her.

Suddenly she was gone, and for a brief second Ben’s heart shattered, afraid he had done something wrong, but in the instant it took for him to fall apart, he was healed entirely by the soft hand that met his outstretched one.

“Come on,” she said, and he heard the smile in her voice.

Ben allowed her to lead him to his bed, and he carefully climbed in after her, finding her already lying on her back, ready for him.

He found her lips with his thumb and kissed her soundly, remembering anew how fucking amazing even just _ kissing _could be.

“Undress me,” she gasped, coming up for air, her thumb tucking under the collar of his shirt and trailing along his collarbone, giving him goosebumps and sending his heart racketing against his ribcage.

He obeyed, lifting the silky top up from the lacy fringe, her back arching against the mattress to help him shimmy it off. Then, her hands were grabbing at the bottom of his shirt, dragging it up over his shoulders and head. Once gone, her hands were everywhere, over his stomach, across his chest, finding the scar on his left flank, tracing the ones that marred his back.

Before he could wrap his head around what it meant to have _ Rey _ touching him like _ that_, her fingers were slipping under the waistband of his pants and tugging down, releasing his cock into the cooler air.

There was a hum of… approval.

Kicking his pants off the rest of the way, he then followed her lead, doing the same for her tiny cotton shorts and lacy underwear.

Rey. Was in his bed. Naked. Wanting him.

Finally free of her clothes, he wanted to learn her, to study every smooth, soft, sacred inch of her, and he allowed himself a moment to run his hand over her belly. The sweetness of her skin was a thousand times better than any daydream, and if he hadn’t been so desperately aroused for her in that moment he might have cried. 

“Ben—” she started, opening her legs for him.

His need for her body crashed over him, an overwhelming, heady rush. He couldn’t steal any more time.

Tracing two fingers down from the small patch of coarse hair at the apex of her thighs to the warmth and wetness below, he found her entrance. Her breaths were coming in shallow, and at the finger he easily slid inside her she gave a small, satisfied moan.

With a jolt, Ben remembered the important things.

“I’m clean,” he blurted, his finger still inside her, slowly sliding in and out almost absentmindedly as he spoke.

“Me, too,” Rey said distantly, dreamily. “And I’m on the pill.”

“Can I—”

“Yes, Ben, I want you to,” she reassured him.

His name on her lips was intoxicating, and he needed no further prompting. Taking his cock in his hand, he pressed the head up against the slickness between her legs, gently guiding it into her. 

The “_ah _” she breathed out was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his life. He gave a few experimental soft thrusts, encasing himself more fully inside her with each push.

He was addicted to her already, and they had barely even started.

Ben bent over her, bracing his palms against the mattress just over her shoulders as he pulled out just a bit and gave a more intentional thrust, reveling at the sharp intensity of the pleasure. A stab of self-consciousness bit into him, and he tried to school his expression, but the _ sounds _ she was making distracted him from it entirely.

“Feels so good, Ben,” she moaned quietly, grasping his forearms with her small hands, anchoring herself to him.

He gave her everything, earnestly, setting a good pace, snapping his hips up into her. Moving forward, higher over her, he changed the angle a bit, and by the sweet whines she was making he thought maybe he was catching her clit.

The indecent wet squelches between them and the slap of his balls against her skin were an unholy drumbeat, pushing him closer and closer to the edge, her muttered, “Yes, Ben, yes!” a depraved benediction.

The pace he now set wasn’t punishing, but deliberate, determined, and it wasn’t long before she tightened around him, clamping down rhythmically, pushing against him and giving him an incredible friction that left him seeing stars. He was close, he could tell, and every lovely whine and whimper from Rey drove him further and further toward that point of ecstasy.

He came, and with the pulsing of his cock inside her, she came around him, her hands gripping his forearms like he was a lifeline, the force of their climax together like the perfect collision of two heavenly bodies.

Reluctant to part from her, he pulled away, and she gave a long sigh of contentment before rolling off the bed and making her way over to the bathroom on wobbly legs, her gait a little unsteady on the hardwood floor. Ben grabbed a new pair of boxers from his drawer and wiped himself off with them, sitting on the edge of his bed and trying not to think too hard about what had just happened. Not that it hadn’t been good, because it had felt fucking _ incredible_, but the implications of it all threatened to overwhelm him.

When Rey returned, she sat down next to him on the bed where he was now holding his head in his hands, and traced a few long strokes across his back and kissed his shoulder, leaning into him.

“I want this,” she said. “And, I think you want it, too.” He huffed grimly at her, but she didn’t let it deter her. “Let’s figure it out together, okay?”

Nodding, he opened his arms to invite her to him, and she happily complied, crawling over into his lap. He held her tightly against his chest, his heart hurting in that way that felt like it was breaking and healing at the same time.

For a time there was silence between them, but Ben decided to break it, softly murmuring into her hair, “I bet you have freckles.”

Rey gasped and playfully hit his chest. “How? How are you right, _ every _time?” she demanded.

“It’s my fifth sense.”

“You’re the absolute worst,” she said, snuggling in closer to him, relaxing into the embrace.

Ben didn’t know where this would go, and he was _ afraid_, but Rey was right. All he needed was a little courage, and if Rey was there by his side, he knew he could face anything that came their way.

So he held her close, and they stepped off the curb together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!💕
> 
> Ben's condition is called Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, which you can learn about [here](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/von-hippel-lindau-syndrome).
> 
> To do research for this fic, to portray a character with blindness in as accurate and informed a way as possible, I watched many of Maureen Bassmaster's "Breaking Blind" videos, which can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/user/BreakingBlind/videos). She's a super cool lady and her efforts to increase awareness and teach independence are inspiring.
> 
> Also, a HUGE shoutout for my two betas, Artio and Tazwren--couldn't have done this without you!
> 
> UPDATE: Look at these delightful gifted moodies from Frog_heart_00, Azuwrite, and the lovely SpaceWaffles!!! I could die!!!  

> 
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